The Perelman School of Medicine and its Veterans Care Excellence Program at the University of Pennsylvania is going to the dogs.
Warrior Canine Connection, a nonprofit that breeds, trains and places highly skilled service dogs with service members and veterans with physical and psychological trauma, is now providing an on-site service dog training program for Penn veteran students, staff and those served by the university.
“To have a program like this accessible on campus is incredible—as it will allow veteran students and staff to more actively engage and benefit from the program while helping to serve other veterans by helping to meet the incredible need for service dogs,” said WCC Founder and Executive Director Rick Yount.
The program uses WCC’s Mission Based Trauma Recovery training model, which teaches veterans how to train service dogs for their fellow vets. The new program is made possible thanks to a generous $100,000 gift from Team Foster, a local Philadelphia-based veteran support organization dedicated to serving disabled veterans through community support, veteran peers and highly trained service dogs.
“Service dogs literally save lives,” said Nick Liermann, founder and executive director of Team Foster. “Partnering with Warrior Canine Connection and Penn provides Philadelphia-area veterans access to these amazing animals—something our area desperately needs.”
VCEP at Penn established a formalized structure to guide the existing and continued growth and development of Penn Medicine's programs and services for veterans in an effort to create a streamlined and supportive culture of care.
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The program oversees the recruiting, training and success-building of veteran employees at the health system and ensures veteran patients served by Penn receive optimum care. In addition, the VCEP program helps streamline the process of navigating Department of Veterans Affairs health care benefits.
The program officially launched in October and is located on Penn’s campus. A WCC service dog training instructor, along with five service dogs in training, are based at the location. The program is actively seeking puppy parents, volunteers who help raise and train the service dogs in training for up to the first two years of their lives.
Veterans interested in learning more about the program can email mbtr@warriorcanineconnection.org or visit warriorcanineconnection.org.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.
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